D.H. Lawrence Ranch Initiatives

Since 2014, I have served the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co (UNM) as co-chair for the D. H. Lawrence Ranch Ini­tia­tives, a post I share with Al Sena, direc­tor of UNM’s Facil­i­ties Management.

The goal of the UNM D. H. Lawrence Ranch Ini­tia­tives is to pre­serve the lega­cy of world-renowned British nov­el­ist D.H. Lawrence and his wife, Frie­da Lawrence, by revi­tal­iz­ing and expand­ing the facil­i­ties of the 160-acre ranch that lies about 18 miles north­west of Taos, New Mex­i­co near the vil­lage of San Cristo­bal. New Mex­i­co High­way 522 north from Taos takes one to the turnoff to the east­ern-run­ning 4.2 mile mean­der­ing grav­el road up the moun­tain­side to the Ranch.

Along­side James Joyce and Vir­ginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the most impor­tant writ­ers of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. An accom­plished and cel­e­brat­ed poet, short sto­ry writer, drama­tist, and trav­el author, Lawrence is best known for his ground­break­ing nov­els, among them, Women in Love, Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and The Rain­bow.

Dur­ing his life­time, Lawrence and his spouse, Frie­da, pos­sessed a sin­gle piece of prop­er­ty out­side Taos, New Mex­i­co. Mabel Dodge Luhan gave the Ranch to the cou­ple and to Frie­da in par­tic­u­lar, in exchange for the orig­i­nal hand-writ­ten man­u­script of Sons and Lovers. The man­u­script cur­rent­ly resides in UC-Berkeley’s Ban­croft Library.)

To learn more about the Ranch and the Ini­tia­tives, vis­it the web­site for the D.H. Lawrence Ranch Ini­tia­tives.

You can also watch this 14-minute infor­ma­tion­al video on the prop­er­ty and its history.